Unilever Directors, Senior Managers and Tea Blenders from India, Sri Lanka, China, Singapore, UK, US, Pakistan during a field visit to one of the tea farms near Tegat tea factory. The officials were shown an array of modern agricultural farming methods learned by tea farmers under Farmers Field School (FFS), which is an initiative of Unilever, Rainforest Alliance and KTDA.
A team of 35 Unilever Executives from several countries visited Momul and Tegat Tea Factories on October 6, 2015, on a learning mission to understand how the tea they buy from those factories is produced.
The team comprising representatives from Unilever India, Sri Lanka, China, Singapore, UK, US and Pakistan visited the factories to understand how KTDA’s superior agronomic practices and processing standards produce the high quality tea that it is globally renown for. The decision to visit the factories was informed by the fact that Tegat and Momul teas are key blends in most of Unilever tea products sold in overseas markets.
Upon arrival, the team split into two and separately visited the two factories, before converging at a farm near Tegat to have a first-hand experience of what smallholder tea farmers learn under the Farmers Field Schools (FFS) programme - a collaboration between Unilever, Rainforest Alliance (RA) and KTDA Holdings.
Tegat Factory Unit Manager, Mr. Peterson Arao, said that Unilever officials were impressed and satisfied with the skills on sustainable farming that the farmers had acquired through FFS. The tea farmers present demonstrated to the team an array of modern agricultural farming methods in both crop production and livestock rearing as learned through FFS. The team also visited the factory floor to observe factory operations.
The factory officials explained to Unilever that KTDA has the capacity to sustain the quality and volumes of tea required, adding that FFS played a crucial role in boosting the quality of green leaf. Unilever promised to buy more tea in order to support the efforts of the smallholder farmers.
Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and London, United Kingdom and has been in business since the 1880s. Its products include food, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products. It is the world's third-largest consumer goods company measured by 2012 revenue, after Procter & Gamble and Nestlé.